(Written
by Sheila Gail Landgraf)
The
place where the angels met Jacob and his family was near Harran. After spending one night in the camp near
Harran Jacob sent his caravan on across the Rabbok River. This included his wives, his sons, his servants and all of his many possessions.
The
Zarqa River, as we now call it, is said to be about 30 million years old. It is a tributary of The Jordan River, and it
flows through the valley of Jordan. This river is what Jacob knew to be the river Rabbok.
It leads west into the Sukkot Valley, from where one crosses over the
Jordan and can easily reach Shechem.
This river later became the boundary separating the territories of Ruben
and Gad from Ammon. The Rabbok valley
was an important passageway connecting the Eastern Desert with the Jordan
Valley.
Present
day Jordan is trying to restore the water quality of this river which has been
heavily polluted by oil companies and other industrial endeavors. The estimated cost to restore it is $30
million, and it seems a hopeless task.
In the days of Jacob though, the water was probably clean and useable.
He
helped his family across the river and he waited on the other side. Does anything about those words sound
familiar? I get a vivid vision of all
those who have gone on to God’s eternal life before those of us who are left on
this earth. Jacob waited on the other
side and did not cross the river yet.
So,
Jacob was left alone and the scriptures tell us a man wrestled with him until
daybreak.
What
strange words! Whatever does that mean?
We are
not given the meaning of the “man” but we are told that the man could not
overpower Jacob but he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that Jacob’s hip
was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.
Who was
this mysterious “man?”
Most
have come to believe that the “man” was a Christophany, or the pre-incarnate
form of Christ in the bodily form of a man.
Could
Jacob have wrestled with Christ and won?
To know
Jacobs story is to know of deep, deep struggles against huge odds. That night as Jacob lay his head down to rest
he was at the place of his largest struggle ever, that of facing his brother Esau. He had actually reached a place of
“in-between” struggles. He was forced to
leave his father-in-law because of the mistreatment he received from him, yet
leaving made him have to face the brother who wished him dead. There were
struggles any way Jacob turned.
In order
to face his brother, he had divested himself of all he owned. He sent his possessions and his family on
ahead of him. He is left alone, with
nothing.
It is
just Jacob and God at Peniel. There will
be a Peniel for all of us, a time when nothing that we own or no one that we
know can help us. Everything will be
laid bare before God and we will have to give account for our own actions. Whoever leaves Peniel either goes God’s way
or continues in their own strength.
Jacob had conned his way out of every
situation up until this point; but could he con God?
He knew
he could not.
He had learned through all
this time of struggling that eventually you had to face things honestly and
straight on. This was Jacob’s time to
face God with who he really was. It was
a time to receive forgiveness for his
past mistakes, and convince God that he was worthy of another chance at being
the person he was designed to be.
Basically,
at Peniel Jacob was going through the process that all devout Jews and a few Christians follow
during the month of Elul that lead up to Rosh Hashanah. He was reevaluating himself before God. He was reconsidering where he had been,
looking and learning from his past mistakes and begging for God’s mercy to try
again.
These
are the things that Jacob “wrestled” with at Peniel.
Frederick
Buechner said Jacob’s divine encounter at the Jabbok River symbolized the
magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God. Like Jacob all of mankind has struggled with
fear, darkness, loneliness and vulnerability.
At some point we all experience empty feelings of powerlessness and
exhaustion and relentless pain. There is
only one thing that will change it, and that is the blessings of God.
In order to get through to God for His
greatest blessings, we all must have our wrestling encounters with Jesus
Christ. If He needs to, Christ will
inflict pain in order to save our souls from eternal damnation. Whatever it takes to save us, that is just what Jesus has in mind. That is exactly what happened to Jacob.
God
could not forgive Jacob and have mercy on him because he had been basically
unrighteous in his deeds. There was one
hope though, the atonement of the blood of Jesus. God would never deny that sacrifice. This Angel of The Lord that wrestled with
Jacob was Jesus before the cross. God
would grant Jesus the power and ability to negotiate with Him for the souls of
mankind. Jacob had to prevail with
Christ in order to keep his place in the family. God loved Jacob. He came, through Christ, in Jacob’s place in order to live
the life that Jacob could not live.
Jacob’s place, my place, your place, none of us measured up. We all have been wrestling and we all have
our broken hips to prove it.
It must
have been a tough struggle, because at one point “the man” almost left without
giving Jacob a blessing. It seems that He
needed Jacob to acknowledge that He was the only One who had the power to bless
him. Jacob was pretty stubborn, and so
are we; but Jacob did finally have the good sense to admit this. By asking for the blessing, Jacob acknowledged his inferiority and Christ's supremacy over him.
The man
noticing it was daybreak told Jacob to let him go, but Jacob held on to him and
said he would not let him go until he blessed him.
The
best advice I could ever give you is to hold on to Jesus until He convinces God
to bless you. It was through wrestling with
Christ that Jacob came to see God face to face.
That was the greatest blessing of all blessings! Jacob saw the face of God and lived to tell
about it. It could have only happened through Christ who
came to this guilty man in the form of humanity and brought him to a place
where God would agree to face him yet have mercy on his soul. Christ did this for Jacob, and He did it for
us.
Jacob
had finally wised up. He knew that God’s
will was more powerful and better than his own will. He had an injured hip to remind him of that
for the rest of his life.
We all need
reminders. What is the broken hip in
your life? I have many injuries, each
one of them have taught me and led me to a place of God’s will and purpose for
my days. Without the scars I would not
be able to see the stars. I’m thankful
for the broken hips.
The man
asked Jacob’s name and he told him.
Then
the man said “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have
struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.
Therein
friends lies the secret to eternal blessings, to struggle with God and humans
and to OVERCOME. Many think this implies
that Jacob overcame the strength of Christ in the wrestling; but that is not
so. I take this to mean that by
wrestling with Christ, Jacob overcame the problems he had within him that came
from sin and his own ways. He did this by surrendering to God. In
overcoming, Jacob surrendered to Christ and to God’s way of life totally and
completely. He had already started this
process as he worked for Laban, but at Peniel, Jacob surrendered all. By asking for the blessing he gave God total authority
over his life. If he had not met Christ
and wrestled with Him at Peniel, this might not have ever happened.
Revelations
3:21 speaks of a type of Jacob’s victory in this battle: “to the one who is victorious, I
will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and
sat down with my Father on his throne.”
We can
expect to see Jacob with a changed name sitting on a throne in the Kingdom of
God. He will be called Israel. Under his new
name he will represent the House of David before God.
Just as
Jacob had faced his troubles in the world and was in the process of bringing
the house of Abraham home, Christ too has faced the sin of all nations and is
in the process of bringing all of us who follow him into the Kingdom of
God. We know this from the words of John
16:33: These things I have spoken unto
you that in me ye might have peace. In
the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the
world.
Jacob
had overcome his fears and faced God at Peniel.
He was being strengthened and prepared to meet his worst enemy, and to come
out of it victorious. At Peniel God assured
Jacob of who he really was, and reminded him of the covenant of God that covered him.
Jacob
then said to the man who wrestled with him “Please tell me your name.”But the
man replied “Why do you ask my name?” Here
we are reminded of that passage in John 14:9 from a later time where Christ
speaks to Philip and says: “Don’t you
know me Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the
Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the
Father.”
Christ
has appeared to Abraham and his people over and over in the form of The Angel
of The Lord. He had appeared to Jacob at
Bethel. He had appeared to him in his
pastures as he was tending sheep in a dream back in the land of Laban. Jacob should have recognized The Angel of The
Lord, and by seeing him, face to face, Jacob had looked into the face of God,
because Jesus said if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. The two are One. Jacob should have recognized Christ as The
Angel of The Lord. This is why he did
not tell him his name.
And after
that “the man” “The Angel of The Lord” “Christ Incarnate” “God Himself” blessed
Jacob.
And
Jacob called the place Peniel because it was there he saw God face to face, yet
his life was spared. When Jacob realized
that he had wrestled with Christ, he also knew that he had only been allowed to
win the wrestling match. After wrestling
with all his strength all night, the Angel Of The Lord simply touched the place
on his hip and it was permanently injured.
Jacob had thought he was winning on his own strength, but after that moment,
he knew for sure that nothing good ever happened to him unless it was allowed
by God. This was a continuous lesson that played out over and over again in Jacob's life.
When
the sun was high in the sky Jacob passed out of Peniel and he was limping
because of his hip.
To this
day the Jewish people do not eat the meat that is the tendon that attaches to
the socket of the hip, because that was where the socket of Jacob’s hip was
touched.
